Friday, 7 May 2010

Well hung, innit? I'm hanging like a parliament. Hang this. Etc. The jokes everywhere are from the news of a hung parliament, as the British public - well, 65% of it - went to the polls and voted for no one in particular.

Some of us were foolish enough to stay up all night to watch the results come in, and for a more in-depth, more drunken look I recommend trawling through my old tweets at www.twitter.com/weekspotblog. But for those of you with lives to lead (I did update so many times I broke Twitter and was told to stop posting), here's a summary of how no one bar the Greens can be happy with this result.

And fair play to the Greens. It's a fantastic outcome for the single-issue nutters.

Anyway, here goes: the Top Ten 'Oh Fucks' of the night:

1. Oh fuck. The Liberal Democrats had a shocker last night, and this is where it all started to go wrong. Clegg's collective had been making promises of a genuine challenge to Government and 110 seats. Instead, they lost five MPs, and currently stand on a paltry 54 (16 constituencies are still to be announced).

Again, it all started here. The LibDems' no1 target seat saw a 6.9% swing AWAY from the yellows and into the hands of a gleeful Tory party. No doubt for Doughty; no paradise lost for Milton.

But they won't be at all happy with failing to reach a majority, and it was in constituencies such as this that they fell. It really looked like the Blues would take Tooting, but despite a healthy 3.6% swing against them Labour and Sadiq Khan MP held on. 'Yes we Khan' were the chants. Yes we Khan. +10% turnout too. Good work, Tooting.

Not Tooting his own horn here

3. Oh fuck. Labour had to endure a torrid night (this was a particularly painful one to lose - just 54 votes in it), and what will really hurt is losing some big names. Two former home secretaries, Charles Clarke and Jacqui Smith, were among the casualties and although Clarke is anti-Brown and anti-Balls, he's an old head they didn't want to see go.

How fucked? This fucked

4. Oh fuck. Labour weren't the only party to say goodbye to some prominent figures and again, this was the beginning of the end for the LibDems. Lembit Opik, he of Cheeky Girl fame, lost his seat in Montgomeryshire as the Tories made another gain - this time, with a massive 13.2% swing. Cheeky.

6. Oh fuck. The British National Party didn't win any seats, which is great news, but I wish I could be more optimistic about half a million voters putting an X by their name. I can't. It's disgusting.

7. Oh fuck. Essex has a lot to answer for. Chavs, white stilettos and Jamie Oliver aside, the county has a nasty habit of being pretty right-wing in its voting habits. The constituency that best summed up its extent of fail last night was Basildon South & Thurrock East, where they successfully got rid of a Labour minister, voted in a Tory and gave more than 2,500 votes to the BNP. Well done.

8. Oh fuck. Every time I switched over ITV's coverage was absolutely God-awful, from Alistair Stewart constantly interrupting everybody like he's king of the fucking world to filming outside a pub where David Cameron was drinking. It's a pub - just go inside!

9. Oh fuck. Jeremy Vine's house of wank was the reason I kept switching over in the first place.

10. Oh fuck. Last but not least, I was very sad to see this man lose his seat. Richard Taylor is a doctor who ran as a single-issue independent in 2001 to keep Kidderminster Hospital open, and absolutely slammed Labour's junior minister David Lock into the ground. He then held on in 2005 to become the first independent MP to retain his seat since the 1970s. He's such a hero that the LibDems didn't put up any opposition against him on either occasion.

So, what a bust that was. Here's to a hung parliament seeing some good change put through. What? It could happen.

Oh yay. OK, then, one piece of good news: bag of balls David Heathcoat-Amory, 17 years in power, lost his seat in Wells, Somerset. He literally owns this constituency. It was pretty damn satisfying seeing him lose control of it.